Littlejohn writes: “Anyone who has visited or worked in Japan will tell you it is like landing on another planet.” Japanese culture, he adds, “is entirely alien to our own values. They are militantly racist and in the past have been capable of great cruelty.”

In addition to his wife’s grandfather, Littlejohn says there are “thousands of other British servicemen who were tortured in Japanese prisoner of war camps.” They, and other British veterans, he says, “still harbor deep animosity to everyone and all things Japanese, 65 years after VJ Day.”

“They won’t want to be associated with the expressions of sympathy over the earthquake and tsunami,” Littlejohn writes. “And who can blame them?” He then lambasts what he calls “modern Britain’s ghastly cult of sentimentality and vicarious grief.”

“But how many of the hundreds of thousands of supporters corralled into grieving for Japan,” he asks, “could even point to that country on a map?”

Littlejohn’s column, predictably, aroused a tsunami of anger.

Dan_Grose: Congratulations to Richard Littlejohn and The Daily Mail for reaching new levels of callous gutter press many thought impossible.

TonyParsonsUK: The reason Richard Littlejohn doesn’t tweet is because he prefers old school communication – like burning a cross in somebody’s front garden

Britons are also tweeting their remembrances of reality TV personality Jade Goody, who died two years ago today of cervical cancer. She rose to fame on Channel 4’s Big Brother and was let go in 2007 from Celebrity Big Brother after she was accused of racist behavior towards one of the show’s other stars. Goody later said she was “embarrassed and disgusted by my own behavior.”